


Unresolved

by Kinggorilla



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Interlude, SJshipday2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 00:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20017396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kinggorilla/pseuds/Kinggorilla
Summary: A quiet, thoughtful interlude undertaken at different times by an exhausted captain and a hungover colonel reaches the same conclusion.





	Unresolved

**Author's Note:**

> This is an excerpt from a much longer WIP dealing with the relationship between Samantha Carter and her next door neighbors. Coming to the conclusion that it will most likely never be finished, I felt like it was ok to cannibalize this little piece for #SJshipday2019. Any lines referring to Carter's neighbors would have made sense in the larger context, but I left them in as they also kind of make half-sense in this context.  
> I promise.  
> Trust me.
> 
> No warnings on this one; no explosions, shooting, or other bloodletting.  
> If anything, you could rate it 'C', for excessive consumption of coffee.  
> Enjoy.

Captain Samantha Carter staggered up the sidewalk in the dark, banging aside the gate and completely ignoring the overstuffed mailbox, relieved to finally be at her own front door. The last three days spent at the Alpha site had not been especially gruelling, but Alpha's sun was nine hours ahead of the Mountain Standard Time she was accustomed to. Jet lag was bad enough; Gate lag was something entirely different, especially at 3:00 in the morning. Scraping the key around in the ancient lock, she shouldered the door open, stepped in and froze, all semblance of tiredness gone in a heartbeat.

The lamp in the living room was on.

She never left lights on when she was away.

At almost the same moment, she became aware of a sound, an odd sound that was something between a snarl and a purr. It was repeated, then repeated again, and kept coming at regular intervals. Mentally cursing Daniel for the Native American folk stories he would tell about the skunk ape and the deer woman, she gingerly edged into the room, unsure of what she would find, but ready to sprint for the kitchen, where she kept a backup pistol in the utility drawer. Sliding along the wall, she scanned the living area, trying to locate the sound's origin.

There was a large, unsightly lump on her couch, covered by the throw blanket she customarily kept draped over the back of the armchair. Two black-stockinged feet peeked out from one end of the throw, and a familiar looking patch of salt-and-pepper hair stuck out of the other. There was also a pair of lumberjack boots on the floor in front of the couch. She relaxed a bit, secure in her supposition that skunk apes needed neither socks nor boots. Fist cocked and ready to drop on someone like a ton of bricks, she gently peeled back the top layer of blanket to reveal the sleeper's face.

O'Neill.

Not that much of a surprise, really. If she was going to come home and unexpectedly find someone asleep on her couch, Colonel Jack O'Neill was at the top of a short list of suspects. All of her fellow team members knew where she lived, knew where she kept the hide-a-key under the fake plastic rock in the garden, and had been here at one time or another for one reason or another.

"Hey," she said, gently prodding the sleeper. He made the odd noise again, which she recognized as his version of a snore.

"Colonel!," she said, more forcefully this time, giving him a solid shake. Stubbornly refusing to wake up, O'Neill rolled onto his side, which, mercifully, meant he quit making the snoring sound. Carter gave him a vindictive poke in the ribs, and noticed he was giving off a strong odor of alcohol. 

The bastard had gotten drunk and crashed at her place. She briefly considered dumping a pitcher of ice water on him, then stopped short, realizing she was missing something. Walking back to the still-open front door she peered into the night. 

She wasn't missing something, something was missing. O'Neill's truck was nowhere in sight. It was a monstrous black Ford dually that was impossible to miss parked in front of one's house. It was equally impossible to miss when pulling up to one's house, as the rumble of the engine had a tendency to rattle pictures off of the wall. 

Suddenly, something clicked in her brain and she remembered that, although she had been off-world for three days, this was, in fact, very early Friday morning, which meant that the Colonel had most likely crash-landed on her couch late Thursday night. Thursday night meant hockey, specifically the Chicago Blackhawks and Anaheim Ducks, which she recalled O'Neill mentioning before she left on Tuesday morning. That tidbit of information, _ergo propter hoc_ , as the Romans used to say, meant being next door at Fred's house and watching hockey on Fred's big screen TV. It was a logical fallacy, but one of her favorites.

She also recalled that, as his other three SG teammates were off-world engaged in various endeavors, O'Neill had scored himself a three day pass, courtesy of General Hammond, for the sole purpose of relaxing and unwinding. He had apparently elected to begin unwinding the moment he drove off base. Or perhaps ‘unwrapping’ would have been a better term.

Leaning further out the front door, she looked over into the neighbor's driveway. Sure enough, there was his monstrous black pickup, looming over Lilla's silver minivan like an iceberg menacing the Titanic. 

So, O'Neill and Fred had watched the hockey game, tossed back a few, probably tossed back a few more, topped that off with something venomously alcoholic, and rather than risk the drive home, or God forbid, show up back at the SGC security gate completely hammered, he had opted to crash at her place. Occasionally, she mused, the man showed the glimmerings of good sense. She shut the door before moths could fly in, gave the sleeping Colonel one last glance to make sure he was firmly planted in place, and then headed to the bathroom for a nice, hot shower. 

Soil at the Alpha site was not like terrestrial dirt. It was much finer and more abrasive, like a combination of silica and baby powder. The stuff got everywhere, especially in places it ought not be. Sensor arrays, computer cabinets, delicate scientific instruments, and a thousand other places everyone would prefer it wasn't collected the stuff like crazy. It had a funky static coefficient that acted like the Spanish Fly of the geological kingdom. The worst part was that it imbedded into the pores of your skin and was damn near impossible to get off with the ultrasonic cleaning jets they had to use in place of running water. 

Travelling to other planets seemed adventurous and exciting, until you ran headlong into a thousand inconvenient details, like not being able to drink or bathe in the local water, or eat anything that wasn't imported from Earth, or go outside for fear of being bitten by the local version of mosquitoes who all carried the off-world version of ebola. Just wouldn't make for a good travel brochure, she was sure. _Homo Sapiens Sapiens_ had arisen on this ball of mundane dirt, and here was where they were best suited to be.

Hot water and soap gave way to shampoo, conditioner, and moisturizer, followed by brushing her teeth. She felt like a whole new woman, clean and reborn. A set of warm, fuzzy pajamas completed the transformation, and suddenly she was no longer Captain Samantha Carter, United States Air Force. She was just plain old Sam Carter and she was tired and wanted to go to bed. 

She decided to look in on O'Neill one last time before hitting the sack. Couldn't be too careful; must make sure he wasn't sleeping on his back. After all, she thought, that was how Jimi Hendrix had died.

He had shifted around, somehow managing to roll back into the couch without rolling flat on his back. The blanket was wrapped tightly around him from chin to knees. It was an astonishing feat of drunken maneuvering, and she took a moment to marvel. Moved by heaven only knew what impulse, she grabbed a chair from the dinette set, pulled it over by the couch, and sat down, wondering why in the world she wasn't heading for bed. 

She sat there with a dopey grin on her face, watching him sleep, almost half wishing he would wake up, and then realized it was better that he didn't. It would, after all, be slightly embarrassing, to be caught staring at your CO sleeping on your couch at 3:30 in the morning. She studied the Colonel's face, and a sudden tangling web of emotions surged through her.

There had always been a subtle undercurrent of attraction between them. She bit her lip and couldn't repress a smile remembering their first meeting. She had been unnecessarily confrontational, but she had desperately wanted to prove she was qualified to be a part of the team, and hadn't been afraid to go toe to toe with anyone who doubted that, up to and including one Colonel Jack O'Neill. Fortunately, that first meeting hadn't colored all of their following interactions. She had earned his respect, and that was something she treasured.

There was no doubt, the man was the finest officer she had ever served under. He had been awarded almost every medal the Air Force could give, excepting those given posthumously. He was the penultimate, the epitome of what the armed forces wanted an officer to be, what it tried to convince the rank and file that officers actually were, even if they weren't. It wasn't just his leadership, either. 

She remembered a multitude of times he had charged headlong into danger, pulling wounded out of a firefight, coming back for her or Daniel or Teal'c when good military doctrine dictated retreat. The SGC's unofficial motto was 'No Man Left Behind'. O'Neill didn't just believe that, he lived it. That attitude generated a fierce sense of loyalty, not just among those under his command, but among everyone he came in contact with. There was not a single soul at the SGC who would not have walked directly into the fires of hell for Jack O'Neill.

On several occasions he had blatantly gone against the regs, not out of personal pique or arrogance, but because he had the bedrock firm conviction that what he was doing was The Right Thing To Do, regardless of what the Rule Book said. He had bent when he should have broken. He had refused to sacrifice his humanity on the altar of duty. 

Unlike Daniel, who would not go quietly into the night when issues of human decency were being argued, O'Neill generally kept his calm, spoke his piece, and then blithely followed his conscience wherever it might lead, however popular or unpopular that might be. His outward cynicism was nothing more than a shield, a piece of armor to ward off... what?, she wondered. What was it he was holding at bay? 

The bits and pieces of his life she knew, concerning his past, his ex-wife, their son, and the original Stargate mission rose unbidden in her mind. There was more than enough there to justify wanting to keep the world at arm's length. For a while he had, retreating into an almost catatonic state. General West, Abydos, Katherine Lankford, Ra, Skaara; names and faces and places swam through her memories, some witnessed firsthand, some only known through formal reports or hearsay from Daniel. 

Those had been the things that had jolted him, yanking him back into the real world. She knew he had been torn down to the core, and yet he had taken the wreckage of his life and used the pieces to build something better, something that carried him higher than he was before. She knew that no matter what happened that would not end. He would never stop trying, never stop charging, never stop pushing himself and those under his command to be better than they were. 

The officer she could respect. The man she could empathize with. But there was something else, something that was neither. It was most noticeable when he looked at her.

Not "looked at her" as in "I see you".

It was when he LOOKED at her.

As an athletic blonde pushing thirty, she was accustomed to being stared at. It went with the territory, being in close quarters with large numbers of testosterone-fueled young men. For the vast majority it was simple biology; they didn't mean anything by it, it was simply an involuntary response to physical, or in this case visual, stimuli. She had learned to ignore it gracefully when possible, acknowledge it if necessary, and deal with it ruthlessly when she had to.

When O'Neill looked at her, it was entirely different. It also didn't bother her in the least. She recalled the all-too-infrequent moments when he had touched her. It was amazing the way his big, leathery hands could turn to velvet like magic. His touch had always been not only comforting, but also reassuring in a way she could never explain.

Carter hugged her knees to her chest, resting her chin atop them, as she looked at him fast asleep on her couch. What was it?, she wondered. It wasn't enough to know it was different, she wanted to know WHY it was different. She wanted to know WHY his touch affected her that way.

She knew why.

Only a fool wouldn't know why, and whatever else she may have been, she was no fool.

It was one of those things she couldn't ever admit to herself. Admitting it would be making it real, giving it power, turning it loose in her life, and she wasn't ready to have that turned loose in her life yet. A bull in a china shop would be a tame thing by comparison.

The seeds had been planted in that first meeting. They had been warmed by tribulation, fed by shared danger, watered by tears. The subtle attraction between them had grown into something completely different as time had passed.

Samantha Carter was madly in love with Jack O'Neill. 

It was as simple as that.

It was also as complicated as that.

Colonel Jack O'Neill could never be involved with Captain Samantha Carter in any other than a strictly professional capacity, according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The UCMJ, or The Holy Gawddamn Book, as it was known in certain circles, was the bible the military lived by. It set out the rules they lived by, described their codes of conduct, mandated certain behaviors and circumscribed others. It was a necessary evil, to impose order on a system that would otherwise be murderously chaotic.

They could never be together. 

The Holy Gawddamn Book said so. 

It was a very helpless feeling, one that she hated. Carter sighed, wondering why she insisted on doing this to herself. She couldn't stop loving him any more than she could stop breathing. This wasn't even beating a dead horse. That might be a fruitless task, but at least you got exercise from it. No so here. 

He shifted slightly in his sleep, fighting against the blanket and grumbling under his breath. His face was relaxed, smoothing away the fine lines of care and worry he habitually carried, and she found herself wondering if she was really looking at a younger version of him. He had the beginnings of an excellent set of crow's feet, earned the hard way by squinting into too many alien suns on too many alien worlds. She hugged her knees tighter, wondering why despair didn't kick in and turn this whole mess into a whirlpool of awfulness.

And she knew it was because he expected her not to. Because he expected her to not dissolve into a puddle of self-pity. Because he expected her to be true to herself above all. 

It was because they had both sworn oaths, pledging loyalty to something greater than themselves. It was because those words meant something to them. It was because, superior to any bonds of affection, they lived off of self respect.

Was that respect worth it?

Would those oaths hold?

Could those expectations be met?

O'Neill was steadfast, she knew. Only death or Armageddon would shake him.

But her?

Sometimes, in moments of weakness, she wasn't so sure. There were too many variables. What if he retired again? What if she pressured him to retire? She knew there was a high probability that if she pushed, he would. Could he still look you in the eye if you asked? Could he live with himself if he did? 

What if she resigned her commission? Could she do that? There were jobs by the bushel basket load in the private sector, hers for the taking. She could rake in a dozen times more money than she would ever see in the Air Force. 

And what then?, she asked herself. You've never been caught up chasing money. For all your faults, love of money is not one of them. 

If you do resign, you'll never see the Stargate again. Never see alien suns in an alien sky. Never again meet the strange and exotic face to face. No more exploration. No more off-world. No more anything you've grown accustomed to.

And when the Goa'uld come? And you know they will come...

Will you be able to live with yourself? 

Knowing what you can contribute but turning away?

Will he be able to live with you, knowing what you've done?

The helplessness yawned before her again, and she felt the sudden urge to shake him awake, to make him tell her what to do, how to make everything right, how to balance everything like a giant mathematical equation. She sighed heavily, again. He obviously didn't know what to do, or he'd be doing it already. He was as lost as she was. 

She wanted to touch him, to hold him, to wake him up and make him take her in his arms and tell her everything would be o.k., even if it wasn't. She wanted the feel of his hands in her hair, his breath on her cheek as he whispered in her ear, the warmth of a kiss on the back of her neck. She wanted him to love her, to make love to her, to wrap her up completely, to make thinking stop for a space, where they could just be two people with no ranks or responsibilities.

Carter shook her head abruptly. She was doing it to herself again. This was no good. It was late, she was sleep deprived, groggy, and this was going nowhere healthy. There was already too much of an undercurrent of tension in a lot of their interactions. Not a "I'm going to stick a knife between your ribs" kind of tension, but more of a "if we're not really careful, clothes may start flying and we'll wind up in the brig on an article 12" kind of tension. Feeling this way was bad enough. Thinking this way was not going to be helpful.

Unfolding herself, she stretched gingerly, then returned the chair to the dinette. She started for the bedroom, then on a whim, stopped in the kitchen and programmed the coffee maker for 0700. She scribbled a short note on a post-it and stuck it on the coffee carafe. A second whim hit, and she set out a coffee cup and two aspirin on the counter. Noticing the time was 0415 and hoping she'd get to sleep until 10, Carter tiptoed down the hallway, slid into bed and shut off the light.

O'Neill woke up at 0700 from dreams of giant volcanic eruptions engulfing Yellowstone National Park. As he regained consciousness, the roar of volcanoes resolved itself into the mundane gurgling of an automatic drip coffeemaker. The rumbling of the pyroclastic flow was real enough, though. It was the throbbing rumble of a hangover hammering through his head. The hiss and splash of dream geysers reminded him he had urgent business to attend to, and hungover or not, he rolled off the couch and hustled off to the bathroom to answer nature's call.

The bathroom was still humid, and that, coupled with the wet towel on the floor, led his groggy intellect to the conclusion that Carter hadn't been home very long. Likely he had just missed her, in fact. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror and decided it was just as well he had missed her: he looked like hell. Felt like it, too, so at least everything matched. 

Finishing his business, he thought about a shower, decided coffee was more important, and stumbled out into the hallway. He spent a moment considering the picture hanging in the hall. He had never been able to figure out what it was supposed to be. Looking at it with his left eye closed, it looked like a garden shrub. If his right eye was closed, it looked like a dog. He split the difference, called it a dogwood tree and made tracks for the kitchen, following the inviting aroma of coffee. He noted in passing that Carter's bedroom door was open a crack and she wasn't stirring, so he pantomimed an exaggerated tiptoe the rest of the way.

The first mug of coffee slid to the back of his throat, washing down two aspirin with the old familiar hot, bitter burn. As he refilled the mug, he took a moment to read the print on the side: "Trust Me, I'm an ASTROPHYSICIST". He briefly considered telling the coffee mug that he always trusted its owner, but remembered he had given up talking to inanimate objects years ago. Taking another swallow, he opened the cabinet, and was confronted with a row of similar mugs.

"I'm the Scientist Your Mother Warned You About."

"Forget Princess, I Want To Be An Astrophysicist."

"SCIENCE: It's Like Magic, Only Real."

"PROPERTY OF STARFLEET ACADEMY DEPARTMENT OF ASTROPHYSICS."

"Oh, Carter, Carter, Carter," he swore softly under his breath. "You have GOT to get out more, you poor woman."

He wasn't sure what he had expected. Either something blandly suburban and vaguely classy, or something outright weird, like "ASTROPHYSICISTS DO IT IN THE DARK." He was honest enough to admit to himself that he didn't know if astrophysicists actually did their business in the dark or not. 

The coffee was working its voodoo magic; now it was time to let the hot water and steam from the shower work some more. He noted, in re-crossing to the bathroom, that her door was still open a crack, and she still wasn't up. He did some quick mental math, and figuring up transit times, post-mission debriefing, and driving home, she couldn't have arrived much before 0300. No wonder the poor kid was bushed. 

He showered, avoiding anything too obviously ‘girly’ in the order of toiletries. The soap, thankfully, was lavender scented, which he felt was generic enough to pass muster, though definitely NOT his accustomed Irish Spring. He thought about using her safety razor to shave, but decided that was too much "togetherness", and cleaned up his mess. As he dressed, he looked at himself in the mirror and wondered if he fell into the category of 'handsome rogue' or 'irresistible devil'. He split the difference and settled on 'handsome devil.' 

O'Neill split a lot of differences, or as he expressed it, ‘averaged outcomes,’ around Carter. Possibly her academic background was rubbing off on him?

He was a tidy man. Twenty-plus years in the service had drummed that into him. Even his house, a confirmed bachelor pad if ever there was one, was run to the same standards as the SGC barracks. Jackson occasionally gave him some ribbing over that, but having seen the archaeologist's apartment, he knew the younger man had no room to poke fun. 

On his way out of the bathroom, he heard the heater kick on, and the resulting draft swung her bedroom door wide open. Feeling a little embarrassed, he grabbed the knob, intending to softly shut it before he left, when he made the mistake of glancing at the bed.

He shouldn't have done that. He knew that as surely as he knew anything. Instinctive or not, it made him a low-down dirty dog, but he also knew he couldn't help it. It would be like trying to not shiver when he was cold, or not panting for breath after running up five flights of stairs. It simply could not be done. He had to look. 

The sight took his breath away.

She slept on her stomach; he knew that from the times they had bivouacked in the boonies while on extended recon missions. Her head was resting on her right arm, while with her left, she hugged the bed pillow to her side. The early morning sun filtered through the blinds and bathed her face with a soft golden glow that picked out highlights in her hair and softened the sharp line of her jaw. The graceful curve of her neck faded into a pool of shadow bordered by the bedclothes. A professional photographer could not have arranged a more compelling image if he had a fistful of thousand dollar bills and a week to work with.

O'Neill tried not to stare. He tried hard. He tried to tell himself that he shouldn't, and that this wasn’t the most painfully beautiful sight he had ever seen, and that this was wrong, and that he should be ashamed of himself. 

After a moment, he decided to quit wasting time lying to himself, and just stare for a bit, fervently hoping she wouldn't wake yet. She looked angelic.

He remembered seeing her face, that same angelic face, twisted into a rictus mask of fury as she had charged, MP5 in one hand, Beretta in the other, raining a storm of 9mm rounds into a group of three Jaffa who had him pinned down on P3A-575. It had been a magnificent sight. It wasn't until later he had realized that furious look on her face had been because she was half-mad with fear and panic over him. It wasn't until much later still when he realized why she felt that way. 

He remembered the way her eyes would sparkle when she laughed, and the way her cheeks dimpled when she smiled. Her amusement was invariably infectious: everyone around her felt better for it. Heaven knew she'd had few enough opportunities to laugh and smile lately. He missed the sight and sound of both.

He remembered standing with Daniel and Teal'c near a bank of elevators in a musty concrete corridor at a decommissioned nuclear facility. They had watched the display intently, the ever-increasing numbers tracking the rising elevator car, bringing Carter closer to the surface, closer to safety. He remembered the cold rush of fear when Daniel had said, "Jack, she's going back down."

He had barked commands into the intercom, demanding to know what was going on, ordering her to return to the surface, but she had disobeyed. He could clearly recall the gut-wrenching horror in her voice when she had finally replied with a terse, "Colonel, she's awake."

Fighting back a rising tide of panic, he had continued giving orders, knowing full well it was futile. He had finally ordered Daniel and Teal'c to leave. The three men had shared a look, and without a word being spoken, all knew no one was going anywhere. Together they had counted down the seconds, tensely unwinding from 20 to 0. Once again, O'Neill relived those ghastly moments, once again the bottom had dropped out of his soul. And then...

Nothing.

Carter had had a perfectly glib explanation full of the scientific mumbo-jumbo so dear to her heart, but all of that only explained why the bomb within Cassandra had not exploded. None of it explained why she had disobeyed his direct orders, had gone back down to the basement, or most importantly, why she had closed the blast door. He had learned everything he would ever need to know about her in that instant, that one supreme moment of human compassion when she had chosen to lay down her life so that a frightened little girl would not die cold and alone. 

His eyes were unaccountably watery for some reason. He had come uncomfortably close to losing her that day. He would never have known; she would never have known. The thought disturbed him greatly. Her counterpart from an alternate timeline had once accused him of not thinking of her that way, but that wasn't true. It hadn't been true for a very long time. 

He had lost track of the number of times her magnificent brain had pulled their collective butts out of some jam, usually using some obscure scientific principle he understood only vaguely. 

He remembered watching her interact with civilians they had met off-world: men, women, and especially the tenderness she had when dealing with children. Even when confronted with customs and traditions that went against her beliefs, she had been respectful. True enough, there had been times when she had stomped her combat-booted feet across sacred cows, but she had never been mean or nasty about it. Carter just wasn't a vindictive person.

Daniel had once called her a "bright soul," and while he didn't know exactly what Jackson meant by that, he liked it. It seemed to fit. He knew she wasn't a starry-eyed virgin from some faraway enchanted kingdom. He had seen her, in mid- firefight, drop an empty MP5 and kill men with knife and bare hands. "Innocent" and "Wet Work" never went together. After all, they called it "wet work" because blood tended to make one's hands wet.

There was, however, an innate goodness about Carter. He knew that although she would do what she had to do when the situation demanded it, that inborn decency would keep her from going too far, would keep her grounded, and would pull her back from the edge of crazy that their jobs occasionally took them to. He knew he trusted her with his life.

And he knew he loved her.

He also knew he wasn't alone in that. Daniel was fiercely attached to her, and even Teal'c, in his solemn, silent, one-eyebrow-raised way was very fond of Carter and was very proud of the work they had done together. But Daniel and Teal'c were different. While either would follow wherever Carter led, or do anything imaginable for her, there was nothing in the way of romantic attachment there. Daniel's wife, whom he loved more than life itself, was still lost, somewhere out among the stars. Teal'c's wife and son, in whom he took fierce pride, were still in thrall to the Goa'uld on Chulak. 

It was weird, but they all wanted to protect her. Not in some macho, hairy-chested, condescending "I'm going to save the little lady" kind of way. It was more like they wanted to wrap her up in bubble wrap and make sure nothing bad ever happened to her. 

She had a light in her eyes that only the truly blessed had. She had hope, and a belief that however bleak the prospects, things would turn out o.k., everything would be all right in the end. Time and fate had conspired against her; the past two years had been a graduate course in the school of hard knocks, but she had proved to be resilient, bending when others would have broken. O'Neill dreaded the day that light died. 

He knew he couldn't protect her, however much he might want to try. She would resent that, and rightly so. It would strike at the basis of her self-respect, and he knew, no matter what, he couldn't take that away from her. She had worked long and hard to prove herself, to show that she was the equal of anyone, anywhere, anywhen at doing anything. The respect others gave her had been hard-won with blood, sweat, and perseverance.

Carter was a damned fine officer, one of the best he'd ever served with, the sort of officer every CO dreamed of having in his command. He knew she would be a superb field commander, or if she stayed in the sciences, an even more brilliant future lay ahead. 

And therein, as Shakespeare had said, lies the rub. He knew there was a better than even chance that, if he asked, she would lay that future aside, would give it up for him. And he knew he had no right to ask her that. If he truly respected her as an individual, he could never seriously entertain the thought. 

Sure, they could have a cheap, tawdry affair. God knows, such things were common enough in every branch of the service, even his beloved Air Force. But the thought of Carter in a sleazy fleabag motel made him shudder. Even after a three day recon, up to her neck in mud, and smelling like a high school gym locker room, she was way too classy for something like that. Hell, O'Neill himself, never really a paragon of virtue, was too classy for that. Roach motels were best left to cops on stakeouts and hormonal teenagers. As long as he was a colonel and she was a captain, both in the Air Force, they were stuck, and that was that. 

He realized he had been standing in her bedroom doorway, watching her sleep for a full five minutes, and if she woke up, he was going to have one hell of a lot of explaining to do. 

Quietly he closed the door and went back to the kitchen. He rinsed out the 'TRUST ME- I'M AN ASTROPHYSICIST' coffee mug, while wondering what he would do with his three day weekend. It wasn’t really enough time to do justice to a fishing trip, though there _was_ that sweet little spot he’d scouted over by Poudre Valley on the west range. The zoo was no fun solo. Maybe he’d hit up a museum or two; absorb a little of the culture Daniel was always accusing him of not having.

He had drunk most of the coffee, so he dumped the rest of the pot, refilled the machine, and set the timer for 0900, hoping she'd get to sleep at least that long. He then rummaged around, found a post-it note and pen, and scribbled a quick note. 

"Thanks for the coffee and the aspirin," he wrote. "You were kind enough to let me sleep, so I'm returning the favor." He resisted the urge to draw a smiley face on the paper, then simply signed it "O'Neill."

It was a nice pen, one of the gel type he really liked, so he stuck it in his pocket, put the post-it note on the "PROPERTY OF STARFLEET ACADEMY" coffee mug, and went next door to collect his truck, wondering where he'd left his keys.

This was the way things always ended up between them: unresolved.

At least for now.


End file.
